


The Ghost

by CaptainCrozier



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 12:51:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17142092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainCrozier/pseuds/CaptainCrozier
Summary: 1850: Two years after abandoning the ships and long after the death of his crew, Francis Crozier is building a life in the arctic and finally letting go of the past, but the past is not ready to leave.Post TV canon but canon compliant - except Francis keeps both hands (It's a minor detail but its important for reasons) and James Ross hasn't found Crozier yet... but he will, oh yes he will.ON HIATUS DUE TO ILL HEALTH BUT NOT FORGOTTEN!





	The Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to apologise for misspelling or misuse of Inuit language here I've tried to use a dictionary but probably got stuff wrong.
> 
> Equally I have done some research into Inuit cultural values and attitudes before Christianity came into contact with them. This is surprisingly hard to do as all documented histories seem to be written by Christian white people, but the general gist is that Inuit Tribes were a very accepting egalitarian bunch before colonialists introduced ideas about Victorian morality and roles of men and women. I apologise if I am way off here and mean no offence.
> 
>  
> 
> I have no idea where this story is going - well I have an idea obviously - but it might get a bit far fetched at times for the sake of Drama. Bear with me, suspend disbelief, I promise smut, fluff, angst, fluff, more smut probably in that order.

Nuunuvat, Arctic Circle, March 1850

It reminded him, in a way, of his time aboard the ships. The campfire, the camaraderie. Crozier applied the little star-shit stone to his harpoon blade, slicked with whale oil and listened to the pleasing grind of a freshly sharpened instrument. He checked the edge with his thumb, bright and gleaming in the twilight. Around him the other men tended to their own spears and weapons, chattering in groups about the fire in the tongue with which he had become so familiar. He wondered just when it was he had ceased to have to concentrate his mind towards their words. Now they rolled over him unchecked as easily as the wind and no pause was needed for translation.  He had even caught himself thinking in inukitut from time to time. He dreamed in sharp consonants and throaty glottal stops.

Of course, he still spoke the words in a heavy Irish accent. He had not managed to lose that in forty years of naval service, it was going nowhere now.

There was a gust of hearty laughter to the right and glancing up he saw his friend and elder Nukilik shove Panuk hard on the arm in jest. Something about women, no doubt. It was always about women. Crozier smirked. The poor lad was barely old enough to join them on this hunt and already he was at the mercy of their bawdy humour. He watched him topple lightly into the man next to him with a bashful snicker.

The women in question were several miles back, tending to the camp the men had left behind. At this time of year the hunters would trail in a noisy masculine group onto the ice in search of game and return some weeks later like the heroes they were with sledges piled with seal and unfortunate sea mammals. There was generally celebration after that. There was always a celebration, of something, no matter how big or small. It broke the monotony of the cold, it forged friendships, it celebrated life. It was something which at first he had found difficult, the sheer amount of joy these people managed. The landscape was harsh and unforgiving but the Esquimaux made him welcome, even after what had happened, even after Tuunbaq. He remembered the kindness in Nukilik’s eyes as he confessed that every one of his crew was dead and gone. Later, in private they had spoken of it, the weight he carried, the grief and guilt he bore, and he had wept openly expecting his sorrow to be received coolly at best. These people owed him nothing, he was an imposter and he brought with him only death.

Nukilik sat with him long hours by the fire, and Crozier, struggling to understand the nuances of the words he spoke, received them none the less as wisdom and as comfort. There was nothing but acceptance here, he was told, though the words need not have been spoken, they were felt as only genuine care can be. He was a man, after all, no longer a captain, and his pain was clear for each of his new friends to see, as was his spirit, and his spirit was kind. The lines upon his face told them that, for a man’s soul was etched upon his features with time, and his journey was written clearly enough.

‘You are family now,’ Nukilik had told him.

He had had the option to move South in the spring. They offered to accompany him some way towards the outpost where they had heard of other white men. They had taught him to hunt and provisioned him with furs and equipment and yet when the days grew longer he found he had no urge to travel. To what was he returning? To Court Martial? To a life time of questions about the fate of his men? To the well-intentioned opinions and commentary given by others who had never stood in his place? To a life defined by the tragedy of that fateful year? An example of why Irishmen should not lead and commoners should not be given command. Forever the failed Captain of two lost ships and one hundred and thirty dead men. Forever the undeserving last man standing. Looked upon with pity, or resentment or worse.

He stayed where he was and that summer the tribe he was a part of did what they always did. They celebrated. They offered him a wife. A pretty girl called Amka, with straight dark hair and almond eyes who did not seem perturbed at all at the idea of a stocky ginger Irishman twice her age but rather giggled fondly at his ill formed words and showed him how stitch furs. But despite her persistence and the encouragement of the elders he could not see his future in her smooth skin and dimpled cheeks. He felt too much like her father and what urges he had he could not seem to steer in her direction.  Over a shared meal he struggled for a way to decline politely, not wishing to hurt her feelings or the pride of her father but to his surprise she merely fixed him with her dark gaze and asked him seriously if he might prefer a man.

He had nearly choked on his seal blubber then.

Apparently acceptance went much further than he had expected even here. Amka laughed at his fiery Irish blush and explained that during the long spring hunt, when men and women were separated, both would find themselves to be lonely, and both had come to an agreement that such loneliness was unnecessary. And besides, she whispered, her eyes sparkling, it was well known that sometimes two soft things rubbing together was preferable, and sometimes two hard things were happier that way. She shrugged and tore another strip of blubber off her meal with a knife. If he would prefer it, she was sure he had admirers amongst the men.

He declined. Rather firmly. But he could not meet her eye.

And so it was that not wishing him to be lonely, and unable to tempt him with a partner, the tribe offered that he might adopt the boy Tiguaak whose mother had died while he was but an infant and whose father had not made it through the last winter before the ships had frozen in the ice. He had been well cared for but he lacked a parent of his own, and Crozier lacked a child. It seemed logical.

At first he was uncertain, what experience had he of raising children, he argued, or caring for grief stricken boys? The words were barely out of his mouth before Nukilik raised one thin eyebrow wryly. Loss was something Crozier understood. From grieving frightened seamen to homesick ships boys he had seen every kind of fear uncertainty and loneliness and had comforted them all. He had come as Tiguaak’s father had departed and it was only right he care for him in his place. Tiguaak was duly adopted at all of four years old and he was, quite certainly, the best thing to have ever happened to Francis Crozier.

He followed Francis everywhere. Tottering after him in his seal skin boots and collapsing into piles of snow. Bemused Crozier plucked him from the ground by the slack of his parka and set him back onto his feet before directing him back to their tent, but he never stayed there long, sneaking out the moment Francis’ back was turned to follow him about his work in camp. He was all restless energy and Tiguaak stopped only at night when he would curl into a ball by Crozier’s side and stare at him wordlessly, his gaze a deep warm brown. Crozier wondered what he saw when he looked at him so intently. An old man? A leader? A lone _kallunak_? Perhaps he was a thing of legend or just a ghost to be pitied.

 He would pull the sleeping furs over the boy and bid him sleep, turning on his back so as not to see the mirror of his silent stare. There was something in the colour of his iris, in the curve of his eye, that reminded him of James. His face close to him in their shared sack near the end, too sick to talk, too weak to move, just the last of life’s embers in his gaze, fading in the twilight of an arctic summer sky, and all the while his sights fixed upon him, as though he held the answers to his plight. He still dreamt of it, almost every night, the look upon his face and the little vial of poison.

_Help me out of it, Francis._

In the daytimes Crozier had tried to make Tiguaak stay behind when he ventured to the ice to hunt seal, but the Elders queried how else a child was to learn if not by observation of his parents, and so Tiguaak followed him to the seal hole and sat quietly by his side as he waited. For weeks he had been silent and Crozier thought him shy, even afraid of the strange tall white man who had taken his father’s place. It saddened him, in a way, he was naught to be afraid of now, he was as much at the mercy of the elements as anyone else and held no hidden power. If anything he was weak and helpless compared to the strong young men of the tribe and wise elders.

Francis began to wonder if he and the boy would ever get along and had said as much to Nukilik but his concerns had been dismissed as those of a new parent and the women there had laughed. He plodded on, learning new skills, both as an Esquimaux and a father and Tiguaak wobbled after him faithfully.  Francis accepted his presence like those of the sun and the moon, constant but no easier to direct. He found himself watching his every step with low level apprehension, the boy was as hapless as a one legged Ice Master in a crow’s nest, forever falling or bumping something. The Crozier of the past might have found him a frustration, but they were bound together like two orphans, and that much he understood.

At least he was quiet. And he was careful too. Crozier concluded that he was bright, that much was obvious, and dedicated for a little boy, as he watched the seal holes with keen eyes and fought off sleep to do so. It took Crozier longer to notice the way he would glance towards Francis for approval before each move he made, and longer still to detect the tiny smile he made when Francis nodded his encouragement. He concluded that he wanted to do well and he wanted to please. Well, that Crozier could nurture, as he had in dozens of inexperienced crew before, it would just take a different tact, and he realised, after a time, that he very much wanted to, that he craved the child’s trust in his bleak and loveless world.

Slowly Crozier’s gruff tone, roughed by years of command in bad weather, mellowed, and slowly Tiguaak’s voice emerged. Francis made no song and dance about each new utterance, just carried on as though the boy had always spoken, biting the inside of his mouth to stop the grin. The months passed and the child grew. Francis clumsily stitched a new set of fur pants with Amka’s help and tugged Tiguaak into them with pride and this time his smile burst forth wide, gap toothed and exuberant when the boy returned it in full.  In the warmer months Tiguaak still followed, but now he led too,  skipping through shale, grabbing a mittened hand and tugging Francis to whatever piqued his curiosity.

In the summer they walked the coast looking for whale in the melted sea, Francis’ hoisting Tiguaak to his shoulders to look out across the water and watch the Narwhals’ dance. When the autumn came again and Tiguaak had turned five, the two of them sat side by side by seal holes on the ice, speaking in hushed whispers or by sign alone so as not to disturb the prey.  By winter, when seal were hard to find, they sat in silence once again but the boy’s anxious vigilance had softened too and they were comfortable that way. The hunts were long and cold and the nights dark, but something tightened warmly in Crozier’s chest the first time he felt his son’s head drop against his side in sleep, the first time he tugged the fur hood about his little face to guard against the chill.

He had been reluctant to join the men this year on the long hunt with Tiguaak still too young to come along, but he had to do his part to gather game for the season.  If he could have he would have counted the days to his return, but days had little meaning, time came in seasons, not in hours.  Still he knew it was not long now before he was home again. The camp was settling for the night and Crozier packed away his harpoon before crawling into his sleeping furs. Five years ago he had set out from Greenhithe as a second in the Discovery Service of her Majesty’s Royal Navy. It felt like a lifetime away and it was, for some; for a little boy who had seen but five winters and for whom England would never exist. As he settled in, he thought again that all that mattered now was here, waiting in a caribou tent a few miles march South. His little boy did not care for Francis’ past, only for Francis himself, and that made his heart feel oddly light at last.

Crozier smiled and felt in his pocket for the soap stone whale he had been carving in his free time, its back smooth and domed, its face mischievous. Tiguaak would like it, he was sure. Pulling a cloth from his parka he began to buff it to a fine shine, imagining the lad’s face when he finally returned home and saw him and his new trinket. Life was short and cruel and hard, but it was also simple, beautiful and free. For so long he had wished he could change the past, recover some of what was lost, save his men, but now for the first time in years he realised he was looking forward, despite the pain, perhaps because of it. He had grieved and now he had to live.

_God wants you to live, Francis._

He kept the little whale in his palm as he slept, he hoped that it would ward away his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I used that line of James' again about God wanting Francis to live but in my defence... its SUCH a good line and I won't use it again...


End file.
